First week back after the Easter holidays and Faga has found a video artist along with 6 boys who have agreed to take part in the performance. With timetables firmly in place for the boys end of year exams, their time is precious and this does pose a problem for us working within the school curriculum. The video artist has suggested that we capture each student's action individually and video one boy at a time chopping onions; this process will allow for a more intensely controlled portrait to appear in the final edit of the video. I feel a pang of disappointment as to missing out on the live event and experience of working with a larger group, to watch boys chop and cry in unison together.
Thinking about the process of collaboration and artists working together, and the importance of generating ideas and processes, this is what I enjoy about collaborating. A special energy grows out of this and vitalises the collaborative relationship and experience. This collaboration came about because I found a way of continuing to ask questions important to me as an artist within my place of work.
This question of what is spiritual and why should it be important to artists is what I struggle with. Kandinsky wrote about 'feelings' as being the material expression of the soul, and described 'thought' as a product of the spirit. So are emotions the only tangible measure of expressions of 'thought' and 'feeling'? Reflecting on this question I was reminded of works by performance artists such as Franko B, Kira O'Reilly and others that emit bodily fluids during their performances. As a result of a childhood experience I confess that I have never been able to to see any of the aforementioned artists perform in the flesh (as it were), however having spent many hours reading about these artists in the study rooms at the Live Art Development Agency and online, I started to challenge my fascination for reading about the performances but not being able to see the live performances for myself. I know I'm not alone and it really is a case that I cannot bare to see the blood spill, but this performed ritual of artists exposing themselves viscerally got me chewing over Kandinsky's idea of the 'inner life' in terms of the spiritual. What is a 'true' or 'real' expression of the artist's inner life and what could it look like? Must the spiritual mean that which is 'unseen'?
